Let me reiterate my strong conviction that GOOG is not the world-class company that gung-ho investors seem to believe it is. As we know, the firm proved early on that it is morally gutless by caving to the Chinese on issues of censorship.  (So, recently, did Yahoo!  See below.)  Google has also shown little desire to interact in any way with its customers, even when serious security breaches are at issue as detailed in the chat room earlier. Rather than deal with such problems, they send out form letters that render them about as approachable and helpful as the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz.  

But what really surprises is that Google, which supposedly hires only the cream of the college crop, has botched basic programming jobs that would barely challenge a seventh grade hacker. Take their Documents and Spreadsheets page, for example. It represents a key step toward the company’s goal of generating revenues from a source other than advertising, which so far is the only way Google has figured out how to make money. Put an easy-to-use spread sheet on the Web, add some cool features such as shared viewing and virtual collaboration, and you can lure jaded Excel users away from Microsoft Office. At least, that’s the theory of it. In practice, however, Google has created a Web-based spreadsheet that is such a botch job it makes a Windows beta release look like the latest killer app from Apple.   

How Buggy Is It?

How buggy is the Google Spreadsheet? Put it this way:  If Microsoft had developed the product to sabotage Google’s reputation, they could not have created a more effective Trojan Horse. Spreadsheet collaborators are locked out for no apparent reason and without warning. Spreadsheets that you have created and saved mysteriously disappear, only to reappear when you’ve given up hope of locating them.  Work that you revised minutes ago is listed as having been revised “20 hours ago.” Cookies associated with one Google account infect others like some inscrutable neurological disease.

Eat Microsoft’s lunch? On the evidence, this is a company that couldn’t wrest a ham sandwich from a wheelchair-bound third-grader.  Google shares are currently trading near $500. Shouldn’t investors be asking themselves whether some brash new upstart couldn’t do everything Google does, but better?  As Google itself proved, there are few barriers to achieving huge success online, and competing successfully is never more than one new paradigm away. And neither does the fact that the company has managed so far to outsmart Microsoft at each new turn say much. Microsoft, after all, is a bloated pig-of-a-company that couldn’t innovate its way out of a Glad Bag.  Most recently, they paid eight times what Google paid to buy their way into the business of brokering online ads.  If that’s innovation, Microsoft is going to run out of cash before it acquires the means to rule Web 3.0.

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Profiles in Cowardice:  Yahoo!

Yahoo! is being sued in U.S. court on behalf of Wang Xiaoning, a Chinese citizen. Mr. Wang anonymously posted articles calling for the end of China’s one-party rule in a Yahoo! group. According to the suit, the Chinese authorities demanded that Yahoo! give them information about the poster, and Yahoo! complied. Wang was then arrested in China, beaten severely by the police, and sentenced to ten years in prison. “Do you Yahoo!?” If so — and even if not — remember Wang Xiaoning.  (From National Review, May 14 issue.)